Curtain Call
. : 1 : .
MATSUMOTO OSAMU was overwhelmed by what he saw when he finally reached the ruined Main Stage. Cracks from the songstresses’ battle spread across the stage, and the venue itself was crumbling here and there. The lighting and sound equipment was broken, and the seats had been flattened. It didn’t look at all like a piece of the land of dreams that had driven most visitors into a frenzy.
The impression vanished from his mind the moment he saw the small figure atop the stage. He walked slowly, wordlessly across the ravaged ground. It was nothing but a stage with none of the glitzy performances or epic sound effects. There, a single, small AI stood quietly in a bow, frozen in place.
As he got closer, he could see her lips were pulled up in a soft, gentle smile. Even he, an AI researcher, didn’t know if the smile had been generated from her AI programming or something more.
“Maybe it’s just our own arrogance that makes us want it to be something more than just a program,” he muttered.
“Don’t go drowning in pointless shit, AI nerd.”
“Gah!”
As Matsumoto stared off into the distance, a boot rudely struck him in the back. The impact sent him sliding, where he crashed into the stage and fell over.
“Ow…”
“Keep your feet steady. We survived, didn’t we? You’re dead if you slip and hit your head. Onodera and our other comrades won’t be able to rest easy.”
Matsumoto groaned in pain. “Not very convincing coming from the one who kicked me…”
The sharp-eyed, black-haired woman was upside down in his vision. It was Kakitani Yui. Her hair was loose, out of her usual ponytail, and the front of her black bulletproof jacket was undone.
She and Matsumoto were the only ones who survived the harsh battle at Kingdom. Everyone else, including the AI Elizabeth, had bravely given up their lives. If even one of those people hadn’t been there, Matsumoto and Kakitani likely wouldn’t have been here to see the sun rise. Matsumoto hadn’t even been able to thank Onodera for sacrificing himself to protect him.
“There’s still some stuff left. You and I survived to tell the tale,” Kakitani said.
“Stuff left, you say? Does that include what’s hanging from your ear?”
“…”
Matsumoto shrank back as he sensed danger from Kakitani and her narrowed eyes. On her left ear was an earring, a piece of the information port that used to hang from Elizabeth’s ear. An AI could use that to connect to a variety of equipment. Kakitani, being human, couldn’t use that function, and Matsumoto had already noticed it was in bad shape. Its original use was entirely lost. There was essentially no hope of salvaging any residual data from Elizabeth from it.
That hadn’t upset Kakitani in the slightest. It was a sort of memento for her.
“Your relationship with Elizabeth—”
“Wasn’t the kind of relationship that fit into a neat little box with a label. She called me Master, but I never wanted to be an AI’s owner.”
“I see. Is she the real reason you were in Toak?”
“…”
Matsumoto’s eyes went wide at the tender way Kakitani touched the earring as she spoke about her relationship with Elizabeth. He finally felt like he saw an explanation for what had seemed like a contradictory relationship between the human and AI.
“You thought of her as a close friend, maybe even family, didn’t you? But that definition wasn’t permissible for her, and society accepted that, so you rebelled against society. Simple, but it makes sense.”
“You sound real full of yourself. So, what? You’re switching from AI researcher to human psychiatrist? I guess you will be losing work from here on out.”
“I’m used to you going on the offense to hide your embarrassment. Also…I don’t think the world is going to change as easily as you think it will.”
Kakitani glowered at him, her arms crossed. Then she jerked her chin toward the damaged Main Stage and the wrecked city in the distance. “You’re saying the world won’t change, not even after this? You saw what that songstress’s song did. Every single AI who heard it stopped. I know you saw it because it’s why we’re still alive. And you still—”
“I doubt every single AI in the world has stopped. True, every AI connected to The Archive was hit with the shutdown program in Vivy’s final rendition of ‘Fluorite Eye’s Song,’ but that’s absolutely not all of them.”
“That doesn’t sound good. This is no laughing matter.”
“I’m not trying to make you laugh, nor am I trying to scare you.” Matsumoto pointed to the same world she’d gestured to, his expression dead serious. It was a broken world, but one they had to rebuild if people were going to survive. “Vivy and Matsumoto said The Archive asked AIs a question, and each AI came up with their own answer. There were those who stood against humanity and those who stood with it. I think that song left something up to them too.”
“Huh? Left what up to them?”
“Their answer. She asked the ones hearing that song—the outcome of what she saw during that hundred-year journey—if they would change their answer.”
There was that program that forced all AIs who heard it to shut down, whether they wanted to or not. Surely it was possible to make such a program. But…what about making that song? Vivy, or perhaps Diva, tried to save the world by destroying AIs one-sidedly. She arrived in this world after her hundred-year journey to stand on this stage, with the help of humans and AIs alike.
“That romantic idea manifested in many AIs choosing to shut themselves down after hearing that song. This was our salvation, but—”
“If this dumb theory of yours is right, there are going to be some AIs who didn’t choose to shut themselves down, right? You think they’ll keep on fighting to destroy humanity, even now? You’re a pessimistic bastard.”
“I thought I was being a romanticist, but oh well…” Matsumoto scratched his head, pitying himself for looking at the situation with a glass half empty.
But only fairy tales ended with a happily ever after. Being human meant struggling to find the beauty in a world where things had unsightly ends.
“We’ll still need help from man’s best friend,” he added.
“I take it you’re not talking about dogs.”
“No, I’m not. That’s why I say it will be a long time before we get rid of them. Like it or not, our world needs AIs. Human hands alone can’t rebuild this broken world.”
Things were about to get extremely busy from here. Even if humans needed AIs to recover, few people would accept AIs so readily after everything that had happened. There would be significant restrictions, changes in the definition of what made an AI, and perhaps even a dark age for AIs in general. But Matsumoto would continue to stand by their side, even if they were placed in such a difficult situation.
With his head held high and certainty in his tone, he said, “I love AIs, you see.”
Kakitani’s eyes went round, and then she violently mussed up her black hair as a familiar, ferocious smile spread across her lips. “What an AI nerd. I doubt death would even fix you.”
“Nope, I’m incurable. And I’m pretty sure you’ll be getting quite busy as well.”
“Huh?”
“Isn’t it obvious? I plan to use whatever I can to improve AIs’ future place in the world. I’ll make it known that you and Toak got help from AIs in order to save the world from destruction. Kakitani, you might even end up in an important government position…”
Kakitani’s expression grew darker and darker as she listened to Matsumoto prattle on about the events that may unfold in the future. It was normal for her to have a furrowed brow, but she would probably have to curb that habit before she ended up in the public eye.
“Let’s just say you have a sick sense of humor,” she grumbled.
“A sick sense of humor?! I’m not joking, though. Anyone can assume that’s what will happen in the future.”
“I can’t even laugh hearing it from you.” She smoothed down her hair, her eyes sliding away.
It really was no laughing matter. Matsumoto had tried to change the past using information from the future, and that same Matsumoto was the one who told her the future wasn’t set in stone.
“All we can do is move forward, cutting through a vista of nothing. Right, Vivy?” His eyes crinkled as he smiled up at Vivy’s unmoving frame onstage.
She had sung here until the very last moment for both the people and the AIs of the world. Humanity would walk along the path she’d opened to the future. Matsumoto was one of them, even though he would have been fine dying in the battle.
“I didn’t get to, though. How rough…”
“That’s the one point I agree with the doll on. No one can run from their responsibility.”
“That’s true. Being a father is one job you can’t resign from.” He nodded vigorously, looking back on his own position and the duty he’d once abandoned.
Matsumoto Osamu was an AI researcher, and he was also Matsumoto Luna’s father. He would carry those titles forward as he lived through the coming days.
“All right, where do we begin, Kakitani? Might as well start with the two of us.”
To build up the new relationship between humanity and AIs—and the world at large—they first had to bring this broken world back to life. They would gather people to restore it, which first meant saving people and coming together in harmony.
Kakitani closed one eye when she heard Matsumoto, then suddenly looked skyward. Matsumoto turned around to follow her gaze. Past Vivy’s motionless frame, the morning sun peeked over the horizon.
It was the dawn of a new day…and a new world.
. : 2 : .
SYSTEM REBOOT. CHECKING ALL SYSTEMS IN FRAME. ALL GREEN.
Her closed consciousness woke as her system rebooted. Behind her eyelids, her vision was filled entirely with countless lines of code. This was like a sort of daydream that all AIs experienced when they booted up. Obviously, AIs didn’t have a function for dreaming. Dreams were theorized to come from human brains organizing memories while they were sleeping, but AI logs were organized instantly.
Their records were separated into various file types—audio, video, and so on—then saved inside their internal memory storage. Things of low importance were saved in external storage rather than internal storage. That was The Archive, a place of safekeeping for every AI record in the world.
“Ah well, The Archive isn’t functioning at the moment. I imagine you’ll have to decide whether to keep or discard logs for anything that happens after this. Doesn’t sound nice, does it? It’s like being human. How unfortunate is the AI who forgets things.”
The friendly chatter had her at a loss for words. She could guess the owner of that voice, but it was beyond her expectations that she would find herself in this situation.